New Project to Make Rewards From Loyalty Programs Tradeable

The Gabrotech company is striving to develop a blockchain-based platform for the loyalty rewards programs, claiming to become an all-in-one service for customers and merchants. It is planned to feature a digital wallet for gathering all the rewards that can be exchanged for each other or converted to either cryptocurrencies or fiat currencies using the GBO utility token. Gabrotech is carrying out an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) with a bonus of up to 20 percent for participants, which will conclude in September.  

The loyalty programs have proven to be useful for attracting customers, yet they lack appropriate experience, says Gabrotech CEO Andy Chen. His company estimates the global loyalty rewards market to be around $500 billion, rapidly growing each year. Still, surveys show that almost 80 percent of customers are “not happy” with loyalty programs, Chen notes. This results in a low rate of loyalty rewards utilization, ranging from 10 percent to 80 percent, depending on the industry. Another issue is that Loyalty Program Operators (LPOs) do not provide opportunities to redeem bonuses and consider expired loyalty points to be a form of profit.

Gabrotech aims “to democratize” the loyalty rewards market using blockchain. To realize this concept, the startup has developed a set of services, all combined in the Gabro platform.

First is the Gabro Digital Wallet, created to manage different loyalty programs and gather collected rewards in one place. Users are not only able to store rewards, but also exchange them between each other, thanks to the Loyalty Central feature.

The wallet is based on a blockchain network and implements cryptocurrencies that may be exchanged for loyalty rewards using the GBO utility token — which can be held, transferred or exchanged as well. The demo version of the Gabro mobile application is available on the official website. 

The application users can secure their account using any of the options like patterns, passcode, fingerprint or facial recognition. The reward storage and management is further supported by Gabro Prepaid Card for the purchase of goods and services at merchants with collected crypto funds in Gabro Wallet. Cardholders will receive a 0.1 percent to 0.5 percent return on each transaction, paid in GBO tokens.  To enhance the liquidity of assets on the platform, Gabrotech adds the Multi-Currency Conversion Engine — a patent-pending protocol system that allows conversion of supported cryptocurrency to required fiat currency “at market value in real time.”

At the core of the Garbo platform lies the GBO token. For users, it gives access to the platform, serves as a means of payment and makes loyalty rewards points exchangeable and convertible. Merchants are connected to the platform in order to accept GBO for payments.For LPOs, Gabro is developing the O2O Analytics Platform, which provides insights on customer trends and preferences, and personalized digital channels for issuing branded merchant tokens. Relevant offers can be targeted through the platform on past transactions between Gabrotech and the merchant.

To bring the platform to life, Gabrotech has invited several major partners,  including Espeo Blockchain to improve its distributed ledger solution and Adpost — an advertising network which will be the first client to test the O2O Analytics Platform. The Gabrotech also collaborates with China Unicom, a communication operator, in big data and cloud solutions, and will supply Garbo Wallet to more than 300 million of its users. The project is backed by the blockchain division of Deloitte global consulting company.

Recently, Gabro announced a partnership with trade.io, whose “extensive knowledge in blockchain technology and corporate governance has made them a valuable asset for assistance and advice,” according to a press release. trade.io has also invested $2 million worth of GBO tokens in the project, along with its CEO Jim Preissler becoming a marketing advisor for the project.

The company launched its token sale in August, which will last until September. There is an opportunity to get a 10-20 percent bonus, depending on the amount of contribution.

According to the roadmap, Gabro has scheduled the start of the signup program for loyalty merchants for October, which will be followed by the platform release in December, with more services to come.